


A Bloody Mess

by Anica



Series: Hanni-verse [35]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 2/3 times it is, Blood, Bumps and Scratches, Discriptions of Murder, Established Relationship, Except when it's not, Food is People, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, M/M, Nightmares, Post Mpreg, Referenced to Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 14:14:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2153628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anica/pseuds/Anica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For hannigram2lucadam</p><p>Hanni sees something he wasn't suppose to and an accident in the kitchen forces him to admit what he's done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bloody Mess

**Author's Note:**

> For hannigram2lucadam, who wrote: One time he (Hanni) goes for a snack in the kitchen but Hannibal sort of placed some "meat"/that was suppose to be their dinner tonight/on top of the fridge forgetting to place it properly since he was late for work. The meat spill in front of Hanni and he calls either two of his daddies with the number pinned on the phone. Hanni gets trauma somehow, Will gets frightened and Hannibal rushes home, imagine the love! 
> 
> Tweaked, because I'm bad and I thought I thought he needed more trauma. Sorry. 
> 
> Not Beta-Proofed. Sorry, please excuse my need to put commas everywhere and love of run on sentences.

“Daddy?”

Will Graham slid from underneath his truck on top of the car creeper and sat up to face his eight year old son.

“Yes, sweetheart?” Will asked, smiling as he watched Hanni fidget, trying to get up the nerve to ask for something he probably wasn’t allowed to have, or permission to do something he knew he wasn’t supposed to.

“Can I have some ice cream?” He asked, pouting, as if knowing the answer already. “Just a little.” And then just in case it worked he added; “with the dulce de leche sauce Papa made.”

On occasion, the two of them would sneak into the kitchen to steal snacks, usually while Hannibal turned a blind to the theft. Other times they were chased out of the room with dirty looks and empty threats. Hanni wasn’t a picky eater but if allowed, he would fill up on dessert just like every other child his age. Will glanced at his watch and shook his head.

“No. Papa will be home any minute,” he said, not unkindly and with a sympathetic smile. “That means dinner will be ready soon, and we can have the ice cream for dessert.”

“But what if I’m full?” Hanni asked, shoulders slumping. “There won’t be any room for ice cream.”

“There’s always room for ice cream,” Will said poking the boy’s stomach until the pout slipped away.

“Can I just have some of the sauce?” Hanni asked, licking his lip. Papa’s ice cream was the best but he could eat the homemade caramel by the spoonful. He had made himself sick more than once by sneaking into the kitchen and eating it straight out of the jar. That must have been the reason his father’s eyes suddenly narrowed in on him.

“Absolutely not,” Will told him with what he hoped was enough sternness to make the boy mind him. “Keep this up and Papa will stop making it.”

“No!” Hanni shook his head and held up his hands, hoping it wasn’t too late to placate his father. “I’ll wait for dessert.”

“All right,” Will said gauging the boy’s sincerity and deciding to trust him. “Want to help me out here?”

“I want to see the end of my Ironman cartoon,” Hanni said, giving the stairs a look of longing. “Can I help after?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Will said playfully swatting at him with the towel that had hung over his shoulder. “You can help Papa with dinner.”

Hanni grinned and ran back into the house.

*

Hanni Lecter was a good kid. When he did get in trouble, it wasn’t his fault. If Papa didn’t want him sneaking into the kitchen and stuffing himself with caramel, he shouldn’t have made it so good. 

He had been worried about being caught stealing a few spoonful before dinner, but Daddy was busy with the truck, and Winston and Darcy always let him know when Papa pulled up to the house. His chances of not getting caught were pretty good.

He opened the fridge, searching for the mason jar, and finding it at the very top, where it caught the light from the bulb and made it shine like treasure. He jumped, even though from previous experiences he should have known he wouldn’t reach. Apparently he had not grown as much as he hoped he had in the last few weeks.  
Grabbing the shelf right above his head, he stood on the sliding freezer door. The stool he used to use when he would help Papa cook was inside the butler’s pantry but this was unplanned naughtiness and he was making do with what he had. The jar stood on top of a glass Tupperware container that held some of the meat for that night’s dinner and was just out of reach. He bounced on his toes, holding on to the top shelf when he heard a snap.

The jar flew right past him while the glass container fell straight down, the corner catching him right above the eye. A mixture of shock and pain made him let go of the broken shelf. He fell backwards, head hitting the floor hard enough to stun him but not to break the skin. Other containers fell around him, some simply opening and spilling out their contents while others shattered. He sat up, the pain momentarily forgotten due to the shock of what happened and the sight of the usually pristine kitchen floor covered in splintered glass and blood.

The boy found it hard to breathe as his heart sped up, pounding hard enough for him to hear. All he could see was the blood. He had watched his father handle different cuts of meat his whole life but what he did to it was magical. Daddy called it art. The meat that lay on the floor was cold, lifeless, and oddly frightening.  
Suddenly all he could think about was that Papa would be home at any moment and how upset he would be because of the mess and their ruined meal. He ran to get his dad, knowing that the older man would at least help him clean up.

Will had heard the crash and ran into the house, only to have his young son crash into him.

“Help, Daddy,” Hanni looked pale and breathless, blood pouring down his face from a cut that ran across his eyebrow. “There’s so much blood! You have to help, please!”

“What?” Will dropped to his knees as his hands ran over the boy, searching for other injuries, his panicked mind trying to make sense of what was being said. “What happened? Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

“I’m sorry, just help!” Hanni said, pulling away from his touch and grabbing him by the wrist instead, urging him to hurry as tears started to mix with the blood on his face. “There’s so much blood. It’s everywhere! There’s so much blood!”

Will followed, trying to get the boy’s attention but unable to get through the obvious shock. 

Compared to the scenes that Will had seen, the kitchen was no worse than a messy bedroom. In the middle of the chaos lay a growing puddle of blood from what Will was sure had been the kidneys of three different donors. Will grabbed the boy and sat him on the counter, away from the glass shards. He grabbed a clean towel in order to see how bad the damage was while the boy squirmed and tried to get down.

“We have to clean it up,” Hanni cried, as he tried his hardest to get off the counter so he could make the mess go away. “No, Daddy! Look at all the blood, Papa will be home soon!”

“Papa won’t care about the mess!” Will all but yelled as he tried to get the boy to sit still while pressing the towel to his head in order to stop the bleeding. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Hanni tried to explain. “It broke, and you have to help me clean it up, there’s just so much blood-”  
Will hugged the boy, holding him tightly, hoping that would calm and reassure him. The boy let out a whimper and tried to pull away but his father wouldn’t let him, rubbing his back and trying to get Hanni to relax.

“What happened?” Hannibal asked from the doorway, as he tried to take in the scene; the broken top shelf, the shattered glass, the blood, the ruined organs and … Dulce de leche? It didn’t take him more than a glance at the floor and the crying boy to put the pieces together. Hanni peeked out from Will’s arms and quickly buried his face back in the flannel but not before Hannibal caught sight of the blood.

“Tell him you don’t care about the mess,” Will snapped at him through gritted teeth. Caught between worry and frustration, he quickly made the leap to anger which found a monetary target in the older man and his compulsions, his need for order, and his apparent calm.

“Of course I don’t,” Hannibal said, stepping over the glass in long strides, and taking the boy out of Will’s arms. He let Hanni bury his face against his shirt, staining it permanently with his blood, feeling the boy instantly relax. “I’ll even make more dulce de leche tonight if you let me see what happened.”

“There’s blood everywhere,” Hanni told him, pulling back to wipe tears and blood off his cheeks with the back of his sleeve, puzzled as to why no one was upset with him.

“There’s no need to cry over spilled blood-” Hannibal gritted his teeth and shot Will a cold look, daring him to kick him in the ankle one more time. He had been trying to make the boy laugh, not be morbid. “Tell us how it happened.”

“I climbed up inside the fridge,” Hanni told them as his Papa sat him down on the island and used the towel clean some of the blood away before pressing it over the cut. As most head wounds, the bleeding was heavier than it would be elsewhere. Hanni winced in mixture of the pain he suddenly felt as the panic subsided, and the look he got from the doctor. “It was too high and when I grabbed the shelf, it broke and I got hit in the face.” Hanni pointed to the area under the towel and then to the back of his head. “I fell and hit my head.”

Hannibal reached back and felt the lump there, wincing in sympathy as his son whimpered, eyes filling with new tears. It was a decent size bump but his main concern at the moment was the bleeding head wound.

“It will all be all right,” Hannibal reassured him as he checked on the cut. The hit had split the skin but he didn’t think stitches were necessary. A couple butterfly bandages would do the job and save the boy much unneeded trauma. “Lie back down.”

“Here?” Hanni asked, eyes wide.

Hannibal looked down at the mess, and if it wasn’t for the shards of glass around them, he would have let his son use the island to get treated. He picked the boy up and handed him over to Will, not needing to give any further instructions as he paused to grab an ice pack and follow them upstairs.

With the ice pack being pressed to the back of Hanni’s head, his face being gently washed, and the bandages applied, Hanni drifted in and out of sleep in Will’s arms. His parents spoke quietly, and even though they were close, he could not make out what they were saying.

One second he was trying to keep his eyes open and the next he was back in the kitchen, watching the room quickly fill with blood. It rose up to his ankle and then quickly to his knees as he stood frozen in fear.

Hanni’s eyes flew open when he heard movement next to him, and with a shaky breath he realized he had been having a nightmare. It had all been a bad dream. He touched his face and whimpered. No, not all of it.

“Are you alright?” Hannibal asked, kneeling by the boy, concerned at how pale he was. “I need to know if you feel dizzy or nauseous.”

“No, Papa,” Hanni muttered, still feeling shaken by what happened as well as the nightmare.

“Then what’s wrong?”

Hanni shrugged, not wanting to tell him about the scary dream he had. He didn’t want to think about what happened, much less speak of it.

“You know I’m upset about what happened rather than what you did,” Hannibal said softly. “I would prefer it if you did not climb in my refrigerator. Is that a reasonable request?”

Hanni nodded, and dropped his gaze. “Sorry.”

“The request in not only for the sanctity of my refrigerator. I do not want to see you hurt,” Hannibal told the boy, cupping his face and tilting his head up. “I imagined it went without saying but I care far more about you than anything in this house.”

“Even Daddy?” Hanni asked, feeling slightly better.

“Don’t be cheeky,” Hannibal said, voice slightly firm as he leaned forward and kissed the boy’s forehead, right above the cut. “And yes.”

**

Hanni had done something bad.

He went where he wasn’t supposed to, did something he shouldn’t have done and hadn’t listened to his daddy when he was told to stay put.  
He had seen something he shouldn’t have seen.

Three weeks before the incident in the kitchen, Daddy had taken him to the academy. Hanni had been excited to spend the whole day with his father. He wasn’t really surprised but had still been disappointed when he was told that he wasn’t allowed to sit in on a class and watch his father teach. The little boy was convinced it was all hand to hand combat and super-secret spy stuff.

“Please, Daddy?” Hanni begged as his father powered up the tablet and put in the parental guides.

“Absolutely not,” Will had told him. “Professor Erickson is next door. If you need anything, just knock on her door, all right?”

“Daddy, I’ll be really good,” Hanni promised. “And I’ll be quiet.” Hanni pinched his lips and locked them with an invisible key. “Can I please go to you class?”

“No,” Will said, tapping the boy’s lips with his index finger and moving closer. “Now give me a kiss.”

“No,” Hanni frowned. “Why not?”

“Because you’re too young,” Will told him honestly.

“Can I come next year?”

“No,” Will shook his head, having no intention of ever let his son sit in on one of his classes. “You know the rules. Now give me a kiss. I have to go.”

Hanni had tried to refuse but was tickled mercilessly until he gave in. He had planned to just wait for the older man and watch his cartoons but the temptation to just have one little peek into his father’s classroom got the better of him.

He left his father’s office and made his way to the classroom. He had been there many times but only after Daddy finished his lessons, otherwise he and Papa would wait outside and he wasn’t even allowed to look through the small window in the door.

Now that he was alone, he peeked through the window and found it hard to make anything out in the dark room. He cracked the door open just enough for him to stick his head inside and froze at the image that had filled the screen.

He left quickly, shaken, and scared. He convinced himself that it wasn’t real, just a scary picture.

It had worked.

Until he saw the blood on the kitchen floor and then he could think of nothing else.

***

Hannibal watched the boy closely for the next few days, making sure the bumps and scratches were only that. Both were healing pretty well, though it would be at least another week before the cut and bruise on his face would heal.

Maybe it was because he had been paying a bit of extra attention to his son, making sure there was no nausea or dizziness as a result of the head injury, that he noticed the boy seemed a bit shaken. He complained about going to sleep, more than usual at the very least and it was almost impossible to get him up in the morning. He stayed close to his fathers, not wanting to play alone and a few times Hannibal caught him staring off into space, lost in thought, the look on his face much too intense for a child his age.

Very briefly, just for a moment, he thought Hanni might have his father’s empathy, but he had seen Will lost in his own mind too many times. This was different.  
On a night when Hanni was usually quiet, holding on to Hannibal’s hand with more strength than was necessarily during their story time, and reluctantly letting go, the father found himself awake and worried.

Needing reassurance that the boy was fine, he went to check on him. Hannibal found his son tossing and turning, but not making a sound. He kneeled by the bed, not wanting to frighten the child, and shook his shoulder gently, taking note of the thin layer of sweat that covered the boy.

“Hanni, it’s just a bad dream,” Hannibal whispered. “It’s Papa and everyth-”

“-no,” Hanni whimpered, eyes shut tightly. “No, Papa, there’s so much blood.”

“Open your eyes,” Hannibal said, trying to get the boy to sit up. “There’s no blood, not one drop.”

“It’s all over the floor and in the tub,” Hanni insisted, eyes closed tightly.

As confused as he was by the sleeping boy, he really couldn’t expect any of it to make sense. He lifted Hanni up and sat on the bed, cradling him in his lap. He spoke softly, simple reassurance in a calm voice, until the boy started to come around.

“Papa?” Hanni asked, sounding confused.

“Yes, sweet boy. You were having a bad dream,” Hannibal explained, rubbing his back and waiting until the boy started to relax before continuing. “Have you been having these dreams since the accident in the kitchen?”

Hanni snuggled closer and refused to answer, which was an answer all on its own.

“Why wouldn’t you come to us?”

A shrug this time, which beat the silence but only told the doctor there was something the boy didn’t want him to know.

“Were you afraid that I was still upset about what happened?”

The boy stayed quite, caught between needing to lie and giving away the secret he had been carrying for the last few weeks. For such a young boy, he had done a good job of blocking out the image he had seen. If it wouldn’t have been for the mess in the kitchen, the sight of all that blood, it would have been a lost memory, buried and forgotten in time.

“Am I really such a tyrant that making a simple mess has caused you to have night terrors?”

Hanni grinned at first, amused by the image of his father as the villainous tyrant from his story books, before realizing how sad the older man sounded. He didn’t want Papa to feel sad.

“It wasn’t because of you Papa,” Hanni told him softly. “It was all the blood.”

“Blood is not something to be afraid of,” the doctor explained. “It’s actually quite wonderful in the way it keeps us alive.”

“Yeah,” Hanni muttered. “Won’t do that if it’s all over the bathroom floor.”

“Bathroom floor?” Hannibal asked, having been ready to dismiss the earlier reference since the boy was still asleep, but now that he seemed wide awake, he imagined there was more to the story.

Hanni didn’t reply, just hid his face against his father’s night shirt.

“Tell me what happened,” Hannibal said, gently and with great understanding. “It might make you feel better.”

There was a pause as Hanni considered it. The secret had sat in the pit of his stomach for far too long, and Papa was never wrong.

“When Daddy told me to stay in his office because he had a class to teach, I went to take a look,” Hanni told him softly, not bothering to look up in the dark room. “I only looked for a little bit. There was a lady in the bathtub full of blood. It was everywhere. I think she was dead.”

“I imagine she was,” Hannibal said softly into his hair, his arms tightening. “Were you having nightmares this whole time?”  
Hanni shook his head.

“Well, either way, you should have told us.” Hannibal could feel the boy relax slightly, as if keeping the secret had been a physical burden.

“Daddy would have been mad,” Hanni said, voice just above a whisper. “He told me not to ever go to his classroom while he taught. He said that if I needed him to either get Professor Erickson or call but I didn’t need him. I just wanted to see what he was teaching.”

“You really shouldn’t wander the university grounds, Hanni. That was dangerous. I don’t want you doing that again.” Hannibal sat the boy up and drove the words home with a tap to his chest. “Understand?”

Hanni nodded but the silence prompted him to add; “Yes Papa.”

“Good. Now as for what you saw, I think it would be best if Daddy explained it.”

“I knew you were going to tell on me,” Hanni said, and even in the dark room the accusation could be seen in those eyes.

“No,” Hannibal shook his head. “You will be the one to tell him.”

****

Will had woken briefly when Hannibal left the bedroom but had fallen back asleep not too long after. He opened his eyes when he heard movement in his doorway and  
sat up when he saw his husband lead their son in by the hand.

“What’s wrong?” Will asked, voice rough with sleep as he sat up. Hanni hadn’t slept with them since the night Beverly babysat and showed him a cartoon with a spider mother and people with buttons for eyes. He had never seen it, but it sounded frightening, even when compared to what he had seen.

“This young man has something to tell you,” Hannibal said, lifting the boy up and sitting him down on Will’s lap.

“What is it, squirt?” Will asked, a sleepy smile spreading its way across his face as he wrapped his arms around the boy.

“I kind of snuck up to your classroom when you told me not to,” the words just spilled out of the boy and all the anxiety he had been feeling reached its peak as he waited to hear what his father said.

“I see,” Will answered, feeling a bit more awake as he sat up straighter. It wasn’t that he had expected to hear. He tried to recall what lecture he had been giving the day their usual sitter had been forced to cancel. “How much of it did you see?”

“Only one picture. It was a lady in the tub. There was lots of blood. It was everywhere.”

There had been a few ladies in various tubs. A man obsessed with blood had loved watching the water turn red and run over the sides of the tube. The killer felt awe but it must have been horrifying to the boy.

“There are reasons why you were not allowed to come my class,” Will said, more concerned than upset with what his son did. He ran his hand through the curls and felt a bit of dampness there. Hannibal had washed their son’s face and neck before coming into the room, but the telltale sign of a nightmare remained, devastating the profiler.

“I just wanted to know what you did in class,” Hanni said, a bit of a whine, because disobeying his father had been unintentional.

“You know what I do, and you know what I teach.”

Hanni shook his head. “No, I just know you catch bad guys but I want to know how and I wanted to see you teach.”

“I know that’s what you want but for now you’re going to have to trust me when I say you’re too young for my classes. Maybe when you’re older.”

“Thirty,” Hannibal muttered softly.

“Thirty, yes,” Will nodded. “Deal?”

“Daddy!”

Will rubbed his back to calm him, and kissed his hair again. “I don’t think this is the right time to argue with me on anything.”

“Sorry,” Hanni muttered.

“Do you want to talk about what you saw?”

“Is she dead?” Hanni asked, curling up in his father’s lap.

“Yes,” Will told him, knowing the boy needed honesty at the moment.

“Did you catch the bad guy?”

“I did and he will never hurt anyone again.”

“Why did he hurt her?”

“He was confused,” Will tried to explain. “And he was selfish. He was looking for something that was not rightly his.”

“But he’s gone, right?” Hanni couldn’t stop the shudder in his voice as he imagined a monster in the shape of a man coming into their house and hurting his parents. To him, that was a scarier thought than his own death.

“He’s gone,” Will said and felt Hannibal move closer, lending some of his comfort to the pair as he laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder.  
There was a moment of silence which was interrupted with a bit of caution in the boy’s voice. “Are you mad at me?”

“I could understand that you were curious but when I tell you to do something, you have to do it,” Will said, too tired to split hairs about the difference between being mad and disappointed.

“Are you going to punish me?” Hanni asked, and his fathers could hear the pout in his voice in the dark, with their eyes closed.

“I think you’ve been punishing yourself for long enough. You’re a big boy and soon you’ll be a young man,” Will said, fingers running through the soft strands, letting the curls slip through his fingers and bounce back into place. “You want to be the sort of man that can admit when he’s done something wrong and face the consequences instead of letting things get out of hand.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Hanni said, sounding a little unconvinced. 

“A little more feeling would have been nice,” Will said with a dry chuckle as he kissed the boy’s head. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes,” Hanni nodded, realizing that he did feel a lot better now that he had told the truth. The images of the woman, and to a lesser extent, the bloody kitchen bothered him, but knowing the bad man was gone and couldn’t hurt him or his parents helped ease his worries.

“Good,” Will said, patting the boy’s back. “Go to bed.”

“But…” the boy all but whimpered. “It’s so far away.”

Will snorted at the old excuse that usually came when Hanni invaded their bed much too early in the morning. “You’re a big boy. You need to sleep in your own bed. Right, Papa?”

A soft, fake snore was omitted from the older man.

“That doesn’t change anything,” Will said quickly. “You’re sleeping in your own bed.”

A much louder, more dramatic but just as fake as his father’s snore came from the boy.

“Fine,” Will growled, sliding back and rolling Hanni over to lay between himself and his husband. He was too tired to argue and there was really no reason why the boy couldn’t stay. “No complaining if I roll over and squish you in the middle of the night.”

There was a little giggle before the boy remembered he was supposed to be asleep and covered his mouth. A moment later, when he felt Papa shift and lay an arm over him - to either keep his safe or to take Daddy’s hand, he couldn’t be sure - he fell asleep.

It was dreamless and peaceful, while his fathers remained awake, each blaming themselves for their part in his nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> Dulche de lache is not people.


End file.
